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Jan Karski

Consul for Poland

Polish diplomat Jan Karski was a witness to the conditions in the Warsaw ghetto and the Izbica camp near the Belzec death camp. Karski prepared written eyewitness accounts of the German atrocities in Nazi occupied Poland. Later, he was smuggled out of Poland and into the United States, where he reported to US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Frankfurter arranged for Karski to report to President Roosevelt. Frankfurter was skeptical of the report: ”I did not say that he was lying, I said that I could not believe him. There is a difference.” Karski gave hundreds of talks to organizations all over the United States and Great Britain to bring pressure to intervene to save Jews from the Holocaust. Karski was declared a Righteous Among the Nations and made an honorary citizen of the state of Israel.